While you may still have a few months to wait until “The Following” returns to Fox with new episodes, the latest teaser for the new season makes one thing very clear: Kevin Bacon’s character of Ryan Hardy is not even remotely convinced that Joe Carroll is actually dead. He is still firmly of the belief that the man is alive, and he is going to do anything he can to find him and then kill him.

There is also something else that you have to ask after watching this teaser: Is Claire dead? While we know that Natalie Zea is going to turn up in some form on the show moving forward, the way the show makes it look like Ryan is all alone is not exactly a good sign.

At least you can take this teaser as a sign that the show is probably not going to be wasting all of its time trying to act like Joe is dead, and he will just pop up again out of nowhere. If Ryan is determined early on, then it will hopefully help to correct one of season 1’s biggest flaws: The FBI most of the time looked more like the Keystone Cops trying to follow him around.

While Ryan may still be intent on finding Joe early on, we can at least tell you that when season 2 picks up, he’s going to be happier than he has been for the majority of his life. He’ll finally be in a good place, and have gotten over most of what happened at the end of last season. As with all scripted television, though, there’s only one thing that you can think of after you read something like this: Terrible things are going to happen, and no one will be happy for long. Nobody wants to watch a man love life while singing Celine Dion songs.